Questions and Answers

Pontiac Bonneville Getting Rough Q. You gave me some good advice before, so I thought about asking your advice again on this problem. My Pontiac Bonneville SE 3.8 liter V-6 is exhibiting a problem when the car is traveling at about 65 MPH and you give it a little gas, the engine starts to run pretty rough. Then you either have to give it more gas, or back off the gas pedal to relieve the symptom.

But the symptom is always there at that exact speed range of right around 65 MPH I thought it might be the transmission so I took it into the transmission guy in town, and he said it is a possibility that the torque converter may be going out. Have you ever heard of anything like this?

Thanks

A. That's kind of a guess though. They should be able to perform some tests to determine if it's bad or not. They should also try to eliminate the engine as the problem. I would think that the torque convertor would have problems way before 65 mph. The lock-up occurs around 45mph. This gives you pretty much a direct coupling between the engine and transmission. If the engine were to misfire at this speed it could be confused as a transmission problem.